{"id":17446,"date":"2019-02-28T15:59:42","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T15:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=17446"},"modified":"2020-11-12T12:57:12","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T12:57:12","slug":"unite-mod-asbestos-sea-king-repair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=17446","title":{"rendered":"MoD under pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Unite is asking for a meeting with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) over its \u00e2\u20ac\u0098catastrophic failure\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to contact the estimated 1,000 former employees, who could have been exposed to asbestos while maintaining Sea King helicopters.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite has been campaigning strongly in the last year that the MoD should redouble its efforts to trace those ex-maintenance staff who had serviced Sea King helicopters since 1969, so they could be tested for the exposure to asbestos.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The union said in a letter to the MoD today (February 28) that the ministry had failed to \u00e2\u20ac\u0098adequately\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 answer its concerns.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite national officer Jim Kennedy said there had been \u00e2\u20ac\u0098a catastrophic failure by the MoD in relation to their duties to defence personnel, contractors and visitors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt is clear a record should have been maintained of all personnel working with asbestos containing materials (ACMs) and, in this specific case, the Sea King helicopter.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe retention of such data would allow contact to be made with those who had worked on the Sea King helicopter to make them aware of possible exposure to ACMs.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Jim Kennedy is asking for a meeting with MoD top brass to probe a number of key issues, including looking at all copies of risk assessments undertaken about the potential exposure to ACMs in relation to the Sea Kings.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The MoD has previously admitted it does not have a central record of those staff maintaining the Sea Kings since they came into service 50 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Unite has called for the MoD to enact a three-point plan, but the ministry has, so far, not implemented the action plan. The union has said that the MoD must introduce systems, as a matter of urgency, to identify all current employees who may have been exposed to asbestos; that it\u00c2\u00a0must offer follow up counselling or access to medical checks for current and former employees; and that the MoD must introduce a system that will notify all former MoD employees of the risk they now face due to previous unknown exposure to asbestos while working on the Sea King.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unite is asking for a meeting with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) over its \u00e2\u20ac\u0098catastrophic failure\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to contact the estimated 1,000 former employees, who could have been exposed to asbestos while maintaining Sea King helicopters. &nbsp; Unite has been campaigning strongly in the last year that the MoD should redouble its efforts to trace those [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16064,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[216,144],"wps_subtitle":"Unite renews pressure over asbestos exposure of Sea King helicopter repair staff","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17446"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25482,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17446\/revisions\/25482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}